Michael Wesely (1963 Munich, Germany)

Michael Wesely was born in Munich in 1963. From 1986 - 1988 he completed his apprenticeship at the Bavarian State School of Photography and then studied again from 1988-1994 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.

The artist is known for his experimental photographs of poetic, almost painterly beauty. He achieves his astonishing results with a pinhole camera, in which he replaces the circular opening with a slit.

This simplest form of camera enables extremely long exposure phases, allowing Wesely to merge extended processes of change and time spans in front of his lens into a single snapshot. His art takes time - hours, days, months, sometimes even years. His works are therefore fascinating testimonies to transience and change and question our understanding of photographic reality and actuality.

With extreme long-term exposures of up to 2 years, Michael Wesely has already accompanied numerous important building projects, such as the creation of Potsdamer Platz in Berlin on behalf of Daimler-Chrysler, the construction of the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich or the erection of the Humbold Forum, also in Berlin.

He has had solo exhibitions at the Museum voor Fotografie Antwerpen, Landesmuseum Joanneum Graz, Goethe-Institut Rotterdam, Forum Kunst Rottweil, Stadthaus Ulm, Kunsthalle Kiel, Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag, Alte Nationalgalerie Berlin and the Museum of Modern Art New York, among others.

Michael Wesely's works can be found in the collections of the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, the Kunstmuseum Bonn, the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich, and the photography collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, among others.

Copyright the artist. Photo UniCredit Group